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The GII Mission
Goodwill Industries International
(GII) works to enhance the dignity
and quality of life of individuals
and families by strengthening
communities, eliminating barriers
to opportunity, and helping
people in need reach their full
potential through learning
and the power of work.
Southeastern Wisconsin
Goodwill Industries International
(GII) provides its 161 member
territories with consultation services,
but they operate independently. Each
one has its own leadership and decides
for itself how best to run its business.
There is support in the form of
leadership seminars, including a summer
conference that offers loss prevention
leaders from the different territories an
opportunity to learn from one another,
but each decides the extent to which
loss prevention is a priority and how to
go about it. "Each territory decides for
itself whether or not to have a security
team or a safety team and determining
what size those departments should be
in order to best support the mission in
that community," explained Paul Stone.
The core mission of empowering
people through employment is at
the foundation of all Goodwill
organizations, but the mission services
in support of it vary widely. Job
training and placement services are
common, but a Goodwill region may
operate a laundry, a military-base
cafeteria, a car wash, or a stenography
college. The result is that Goodwill
loss prevention operations—including
risks, technology, and controls—vary
significantly. Some take time to put
UPC codes on merchandise, while some
try to put goods on the floor within
the hour. Some territories have mature
LP departments, with all the bells and
whistles of any major retailer. Some
don't have an LP department at all.
Stone now leads LP for one of
the largest Goodwill organizations,
a twenty-three-county territory that
includes southeastern Wisconsin and
metropolitan Chicago and has over 100
locations, including sixty-nine retail
stores and more than 6,100 employees.
He heads the retail asset protection
and corporate security programs,
operates a traditional safety operation,
and oversees a medical services team.
He leads business continuity and
crisis management, and he's starting
a fraud management unit. As part
of asset protection, he has security
responsibilities related to supply chain,
warehousing, and e-commerce.
While they do purchase some
after-season goods from retailers, the
bulk of items it sells online and in retail
stores come from donations—and
that's where the potential for loss starts.
Employees sort the items, get them
ready for sale, and direct merchandise
appropriately, either to the secondary
market, stores, online, or waste. "The
goal is to preserve the revenue. We
embrace the total loss concept and try
to contribute in other ways, and cost
control is certainly one," said Stone.
Six months in, Stone thinks they're
off to a good start. "We've worked
with a number of our vendors and
have gotten them to sharpen their
pencils a little bit and have had some
early success," he said, noting that he's
looking for opportunities where LP
can add value to an already-effective
operation. "Our Goodwill team
had already done a terrific job of
maximizing donations. Very little ends
up being waste."
Although electronic article
surveillance isn't seen as
viable—slowing down operations too
much—Stone has other LP technology
tools in play, including point-of-sale
(POS) systems with exception reporting
and video surveillance. LP agents
rotate throughout the territory's retail
locations, and Stone is looking at
increasing their visibility to improve
customer satisfaction and retention
and to prevent theft. "We're looking
at more visible security agents versus
undercover agents, and having them
there at critical times, to further stop
ticket switching."
While the reward for thieves is
generally lower, they employ price
17
LP MAGAZINE | NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2018
"Every Goodwill on the planet
should be profitable, but some struggle
because they lack efficiency and
execution—and because of theft."
– Mike Keenan, Mike Keenan and Associates
MISSION DRIVEN